The Journey
by thornfield
Summary: John Smith and Pocahontas have been getting to know each other for some time now. What will they come to realize about self, each other, and larger society as their relationship grows?
1. Chapter 1

_Year and Place: 1609. Jamestown has been barely functioning for 12 months. John Smith and Pocahontas have been getting to know one another for the past six months or so after meeting accidentally at one of the area's many waterfalls. Her father, Powhatan, had decided early on the settlers' arrival that cooperating with them would decrease the chance of harm for his people, and so he has taken the lead in making sure relations are relatively calm._

_Season: late summer/early autumn_

John Smith awoke in his small, rough hewn cabin staked in the Virgina swamp mud to the sound of birdsong, which was normally something pleasant and not too loud, but on this morning, the harsh rapping of a woodpecker startled him. Flopping over in his bed, which was little more than pine boughs beaten down into a frame covered with old blankets and flour sacks, he sighed. He let his chin rest on his arms for a moment, blinking and trying to wake up.

_Another day trying to get these lazy men to actually do some work to keep this colony going_, he thought to himself, and that depressed him. But then his mood lightened. _Maybe I'll get to see her today_.

He threw on clothes he was going to wash anyway, grabbed his bag and put clean ones in it, and headed down to the river, leaving the still-sleeping colony to the climbing sunrise. He was not aware of how grubby he felt until he was splashing handfuls of water over his head and scrubbing himself with a bar of the precious soap made with the materials brought over from England. The King had granted the colony a monopoly on soap making worth two-hundred-pounds but the soap makers were some of the few men in the colony actually doing any work.

He sighed with exasperation as he worked a mixture of wet sand and soapsuds through his hair before taking a deep breath and plunging under the water. _Neither he nor the Governor could force those lazy good for nothing colonists to work. If they starved it would be by their own hands. He was fed up giving orders no one was taking; it was time for an extremely draconian approach._

He finished his morning scrub with all manner of thoughts about how to keep the colonists in line, and the sun's rapid ascent wicked away the damp under his clean clothes as he strode back to camp with renewed hope. Once there, he draped his other pair of now clean clothes over the lone chair in his sparse, rough-hewn cabin. Others were already trying to rouse the lazy camp men.

"Get up, you stinking lay-abouts!" John heard this and smiled. Coarse and never one to think before he spoke, Ben Thompson could be counted on to always get a message across. Some grumbling dirty men stumbled out of their tents, dragging others with them, and pushing and shoving began almost instantly—the usual morning fight over latrines and the pathetic morsels of food they had left over from the voyage.

John, Ben, and the Governor divided the men into work teams as the sun climbed higher over the camp, casting shadows that announced it was about seven o'clock. Five yawning men were to chop firewood, five "gentlemen" who couldn't be bothered to stop fussing over their hands and beards and the state of their satin doublets were ordered to go gather some of the wild edible plants they had learned about from their neighbors in the past months (these practically worthless men were exhorted not to become lost), while four more teams of five were to fill the latrines outside of camp and dig new ones, and an additional three were to work on weapons repair and gardening. It was John's turn to help with the last two tasks.

His thoughts never left the girl during either task, different though those thoughts became. As his hands held a heavy hammer and pounded the blade of a sword over a hot smelting anvil, those thoughts became worrisome ones. He imagined her beautiful eyes filled with fear and realized he had never seen her weep. He thought of the blood that flowed through each of their veins. It would pain him to see her bleed. As he plunged the repaired sword into water, it hissed and tendrils of steam curled upward—he thought about how most of his aggression toward these "savages" had evaporated in the months that he had gotten to know her.

As his same hands became black with dirt as he mixed compost made of fish bones and rotting vegetable matter, stored over the months in barrels, and then ground all that into the sandy Virginia soil, he thought of the miracle it would be if their crops would actually grow and feed the colony, and thought back to the day he had followed the sound of women's voices talking in a strange tongue and surprised the girl while she was picking corn. Her hands had been dusty and rough from the work. The colony's corn crop had failed, producing only a few dozen ears of the stuff. The men simply had not understood from their neighbors how to work the land properly, not to mention they didn't like to eat it and instead fed the majority of it to the colony's four scrawny pigs.

He sighed and shook his head to try to clear it. He had to get his mind back on the success of the Jamestown colony, and that depended on his ability to inspire order, not on daydreaming. But, he thought, perhaps he was becoming a better dreamer than a leader.

In the village, the business of the final corn harvest had begun in earnest that morning well before the sun was fully in the sky, and by this time Pocahontas was starting to get drowsy. Her arms pulled listlessly at ears of corn and more than once she dropped some on one of her feet or sent two or three tumbling from her basket by carelessly throwing down another into it. Her friend Nakoma poked her in the back. "Hurry up! You are so slow this morning!"

"I'm tired," Pocahontas replied grumpily.

"Well, you shouldn't have stayed awake so late!" Nakoma said, far too chipper in her friend's opinion for the early hour. She knew Nakoma was right—she _had_ stayed awake late, but it was the fact that Nakoma seemed to be able to pinpoint everything she was always thinking or feeling that irritated her. Well, at least I have _something_ kept from her, she thought. Nakoma did not know that her friendship with the strange English captain was still ongoing. From the moment that Pocahontas had brought him to the village months ago to talk to her father about concerns specific to the English, Nakoma had been horrified.

Nakoma was so intent on her task that she noticed with annoyance only later that Pocahontas had slipped from the small group, leaving her basket.

Alone in her favorite glade, Pocahontas stretched her tired limbs languorously and then pulled from her bag a brush made of stiff animal hair, a sharp rock, and soap made from ash and animal fat. She braided her thick long hair out of the way so it wouldn't get wet—she didn't feel like washing it today—and then indulged in a morning scrub but was irritated when she cut herself with the sharp rock. When she had finished, she put on the spare animal hide dress she had brought with her, drying off with the other one. She then went in search of something to eat—she knew there were wild berry bushes nearby. Having eaten her fill, she rinsed her sticky hands and mouth in the stream and then cleaned her teeth.

She debated going back home, but knew that no one would be alarmed that she was gone—her friends and her father often saw no harm in letting her do whatever she wanted. She knew Nakoma resented this, because her own mother was a shrill domineering woman (who used to be pretty) who kept a tight lead on her daughter—but after all, _her _father was the chief. Sometimes, it was nice to be privileged. She lay down under the shade of a huge ancient willow tree and when she could keep her eyes open no longer, she fell asleep.

John wiped the sweat from his brow with the cleanest part of his forearm he could manage—his hands were caked with dirt from the garden well past the wrists—and he and his companions were glad the job was done. They had pulled away weeds that were choking the few dozen straggling gourd, corn and bean plants, and had ground the compost into the rest of the area, which they would render fallow for the coming fall and replant in the spring. The huge expanse of now-black soil, in neat, deep rows stretched far. The exhausted men threw their hoes and trowels into a messy pile, and the laziest among them sank to the ground next to the garden.

"Argh, my joints bloody _ache_," griped Lon.

"Well if you would do better than to sit around and drink all the ale day in, day out, your gout wouldn't be so bloody bothersome—on you _and_ the rest of us. Sick of your complaining mouth," snapped Thomas, the youngest sailor.

"You shut your mouth, you little tattling molly coddle! Governor'll be tanning my hide. And I ain't drink _all_ the ale," Lon snapped back.

A furious Thomas summoned enough energy to lunge at Lon and grab him by the collar. The others in the group raised their eyebrows and dragged themselves up on their elbows—this could be worth staying awake for.

"_How dare you_ call me a molly coddle! I ain't none, and I've seen you in the ale storage, drunker than Judas," he said, his voice tinged with emotion.

"It _is_ our only drink for the winter," put in a sullen Jack Hornsby. He liked his liquid courage, especially when sniping at Indians or rabbits through the slats in the colony's fence, except he was always so drunk his aim sent the pieces of shot skittering harmlessly.

"All right, you louts. I'm going to let you settle this quarrel like men. No molly coddles would've survived the voyage. I'm going surveying. When you can comport yourselves again, you are to report to the Governor for further day's chores. Do I make myself understood?"

They all murmured with varied enthusiasm "yes, Captain."

"Fine lot you all are, and a credit to the King," John muttered sarcastically just out of their range of hearing as he gathered this bag and notes and headed out of camp. As he walked out of the colony's gates the men stationed on watch duty tipped their hats and he nodded in their direction. He finally began to feel the weight in his chest subside as he reached the clearing. It was the weight of frustration—at the ways in which he had grown apart from his men over the past year, frustration at their inability to do anything for themselves but drink and complain, and worries that he was tired of the life he was leading. But, when he was out alone in the open air with nothing but the unknown ahead of him, he felt calmer. Today, he decided to follow the sound of rustling. Coming up cautiously toward it, his eyes adjusting to the relative dark of the deep wilderness, he found large tracks.

This made him even more wary. He realized that his musket was at present not loaded; whatever was lurking in there could be dangerous. He heard low snuffling sounds and some vocalizations—it sounded much too fierce to be deer or smaller animals such as raccoons—cautiously, he peeked just over the edge of the gently swaying bushes, and came upon an entire family of_ amonsoquath_-bears. Eating. Swiping huge paw-fuls of berries. They definitely looked like they did not want to share.

Heart hammering, he backed away as quickly as he could and scanned the area for possible alternate paths. He knew he had already surveyed the land to the south of where he was, so this time he decided to abruptly turn right and head east. He walked for miles until he came to an abrupt clearing in the forest. Leading out from it was a small creek, which he thought if he followed would lead him to the mouth of the _Chickahominy_ river, which meant that he was far from both the native village and his own camp. He followed the gurgling brook until suddenly he was staring at gushing rapids.

He climbed carefully down to the river's edge where the rapids calmed. He took a long drink, filled his canteen, and splashed his face with water. He looked up to where the rapids poured over in a tumbling cascade of mist. It was beautiful, captivating even. At the right angle, the water shimmered and it was easy to imagine that the water was actually glittering diamonds or stars. He sat and sketched his surroundings and made a few notes on what he thought were his degrees of longitude and latitude, marked the approximate date and time.

Back on his feet again, he kept walking northeast. He came across a few fish that had beached themselves on the river bank, plump creatures with silvery scales, still gasping for air through their pink gills, their mouths moving and their eyes staring. He flopped a few of them back into the water but then an _aroughcun _skittered into view and angrily hissed, its eyes angry behind their black mask—John was intruding on its lunch. Having seen a few of the wounds these cute but aggressive animals had inflicted on some of his countrymen who were foolish enough to get too close, John wisely backed off.

He suddenly laughed to himself—he had had enough close encounters with nature today. It was time to find somewhere he couldn't be bothered. The sun was now high and hot overhead—it was around noon—and it beat on the back of his neck, and the sticky heat shimmered in the air. None too suddenly he came across the perfect place to escape the heat—a positively ancient weeping willow whose branches offered a thick canopy of shade. He walked eagerly toward it.

Unaware someone else had suddenly stumbled (most gratefully) on the shaded, secluded place she liked to come to be alone and to think, Pocahontas was walking back to the willow tree with her arms full of reeds pulled from the shallow pools that extended from the massive base of the willow outwards about four miles. Beyond those pools lay dark, dangerous swampland, so one had to know exactly how far out to wade into them. As she came up to the base of the tree, she heard a faint sound.

She stopped suddenly, trying to place the sound, but it was a hushed, unfamiliar scratching sound. She didn't think it was an animal, but she couldn't be too sure. She moved as silently as she could, but the armful of reeds brushed against the tree as she suddenly jerked backward, having stepped on a pebble. The sudden noise alarmed whatever or whoever was on the other side of the tree, because the scratching stopped and there was some scrambling. In an instant, she was face to face with her strange friend. He was holding some strange objects.

He smiled, glad to see her. "_Wingapo_, Pocahontas," he said, placing his journal and quill pen on the ground. She quickly glanced at the objects but then looked down at the reeds she held and then back to him, as if unsure where to focus her attention.

She seemed suddenly shy. "_Wingapo_," she replied .

"It's good to see you, " he said in English. When this got no further response than a quick nod, he held out his hands, indicating that he would take the armful of reeds from her. As he took the armful from her he noticed sandy mud all over her arms and up to her knees. "Do you want to go wash that off?" he asked with an amused smile, indicating the mud. She nodded but motioned for him to take the reeds he was holding and follow her.

Beyond the shade of the willow the midday heat was staggering. _Late summer was so mild in England_, John thought longingly. She waded into the river's wide mouth, moving from rock to rock carefully and un-self consciously rinsed the muddy residue from her arms and legs. John was not fully aware that he was staring so intently at her as he sat on the bank with the pile of wet swampy-smelling reeds beside him.

When he had first met her a few months ago, he thought she might be about seventeen years old, but even though their language barriers had improved considerably in the time since then, her age had not yet been established. He was also dying of curiosity about the red tattoo on her right arm. She was taller than many women in England, which was refreshing—he could look in her eyes without looking _down_—and she wasn't soft like they were either. She was an attractive mix of athletic girlish narrowness and womanly curves— every muscle was well defined. Her light bronze skin was gloriously freed from suffocating cloth, and John found the curious practice these women had of removing hair from their bodies a strangely appealing one. It was little different than his own men shaving their faces, just something that women back home, shrouded in cloth, would probably never do. She had pulled her hair into a thick long plait today and the humidity had made it a bit messy looking. It was charming.

The sound of the water swishing around her legs as she waded back to the river bank pulled him out of his reverie only when she was a few feet from him. Her eyes met his and her cheeks flushed as she realized he had been staring at her. He felt his cheeks burn, but she didn't seem to mind. She merely picked up some of the reeds and said in English, "wash these." As they both walked back to the river's edge she caught his eye and gave him a shy smile. His stomach twisted with a stirring of desire. They both waded into the water in their bare feet; he could not resist its iciness as a bead of sweat ran down his back.

"Hot today," she remarked mildly in English, glancing over at him.

"Mmmhm," he remarked. The heat was making him sluggish. Or maybe it was the allure she knew she radiated but acted so casually about that was clouding his mind. They piled the rinsed reeds on the bank but John waded back into the water and this time Pocahontas found herself staring- at his bare chest and back-he had left his shirt on the bank. After a moment, smiling to herself she picked up the shirt and carried it back with her to the willow tree. She knew John would eventually return.

When he did return, she was busy under the shade making something. She had woven a narrow square of the reeds together, over and under one another, and was busy attaching more so that they fanned outward.

"What are you making, Pocahontas?" John asked her in Algonquian. His words became muffled as he pulled his shirt overhead.

They liked to answer each other in alternating languages some of the time; it was a sort of game they played to challenge one another, and the fun part about it was that neither party knew when the game would be initiated. She stayed quiet a minute, trying to find the correct English word. "Box," she said, but immediately seemed uncertain. "No . . ." She went quiet again. "Basket," she finally said, with a note of triumph.

"That's right. Basket. _Winighi_, good," John nodded with approval.

"Can I help?" he asked, intrigued at the work.

She nodded. She had him hold up the reeds that were to make the basket's sides as she interwove between them, creating sturdy reed walls in a faster time than she could have done alone. Soon, one basket, then two, then suddenly five were finished and drying in the sun. They worked in companionable silence, but something about it bothered Pocahontas. There were certainly times when friends were quiet in each other's company, but today she was bored. The heat was making her easily irritable and also lazy. As they finished work on the sixth basket, the reed pile suddenly disappeared. The last reed was threaded in by her fingers and John finished off the edge. As she pulled her hand away her fingers accidentally brushed his hand, and were cool to the touch on this hot day. John wanted to take her slightly calloused hands in his and intertwine their fingers, but he did not. Instead, he finished tucking in the end of the reed and valiantly did not concentrate on the feelings that were crowding his body and mind.

Pleased with their work, they both sat back against the huge willow tree and sighed. After a few moments of sitting lazily with her knees tucked up and her eyes closed, Pocahontas rummaged in her bag and pulled out a waterskin and some dried meat wrapped in corn husks along with roasted squash seeds. "_Nibi_? _Mindjin_?" (_Water_? _Eat_?)

Realizing how thirsty and hungry he was, John eagerly obliged, taking the waterskin she offered while she nibbled on a handful of seeds. They polished off the food, even though John still thought the dried meat mixture of meat, fat, and berries,_ puhmikkan_, was definitely an acquired taste. It had sustained the colony through its first winter in Virginia the year before —that, and the vegetables, grains, and fowl brought by the Indians—and it was one foodstuff the men could easily produce on their own.

"Is this the Chickahominy river out here, Pocahontas?" John asked.

She shook her head 'no'. "Qayugahonic," she corrected. John tried to sound the word out, but garbled the vowels and consonants. She giggled. He gave her a wry smile and skipped a stone into the water pooled around the weeping willow. He watched it hop over the water six times before plunking into the depths. "Try this," he said after a moment with a devious grin. "As I was going to St. Ives, I met a man with seven wives. Each wife had seven sacks, Each sack had seven cats, Each cat had seven kits. Kits, cats, sacks, and wives, How many were going to St. Ives?"

The way she sat quietly and pondered this was hilarious to him. After a moment she bit her lower lip to try not to laugh, but a girlish giggle escaped. She looked very amused. "I can't," she said, which was her way of explaining confusion or frustration, still trying not to laugh.

This made him laugh. "It's a children's rhyme from back home. To teach them how to count," he said. She rattled off the English numbers he had taught her. "You don't need a rhyme," he said softly to himself. He had been amazed at her intelligence and eagerness to learn back when they had first met. She had thoroughly confused his notion of savages, and as time stretched on his confusion only grew.

"Tell me a story about England, and then I'll tell you one from here," she said.

They passed the rest of the afternoon this way. He told her how the king and queen lived in a large castle, wore beautiful clothes, and had immense power and wealth. The people had stories of a great king from long ago who was not dead but sleeping, and would rise again to help the country in times of trouble. The loud beating of drums would signal his return at the appointed time.

She told him that once, long ago, the sun and the moon had been an earthly boy and a girl. The sun fell in love with the moon, but the two of them did not realize they were brother and sister until a shooting star told the moon one night. Distraught and humiliated, the moon-girl fled into the sky, and the sun-boy searched for her. The gods took pity on them and permanently affixed them in the sky. Now, the sun always pursues the moon, but never catches her, revolving over and over in the sky every day and night.

It was the strangest story John Smith had ever heard.


	2. Chapter 2

_Year and Place: 1609. Jamestown has been barely functioning for 12 months. John Smith and Pocahontas have been getting to know one another for the past six months or so after meeting accidentally at one of the area's many waterfalls. Her father, Powhatan, had decided early on the settlers' arrival that cooperating with them would decrease the chance of harm for his people, and so he has taken the lead in making sure relations are relatively calm._

_Season: late summer/early autumn_

That night when he was back in his small cabin, he finished the work he had started earlier of sketching the animals he had encountered that day—_aroughcun_, which his men called "raccoon," and the bears, _amonsoquath_. His small leatherbound leaflet of White and Strachey's vocabulary of related peoples from the failed Roanoke expedition was tattered from so much use. He redrew his map to incorporate the Qayugahonic river and also wrote down the strange story Pocahontas had told him. It had an alien loveliness and certainly a forbidden quality, as it discussed the taboo of incest. It was certainly a more entertaining story on the origins of the sun and moon than was the knowledge he'd grown up with, that in the beginning God had created the heavens and everything in it. He turned the story over in his mind and found that it entertained him more than it bothered his sensibilities. He had never been a particularly religious man, after all.

Sometime later, long after the candle by his bedside had guttered out, uncertainties philosophical in nature assailed his dreams.

As she prepared to go to sleep that night in a lodge shared with her female cousins and half-sisters, Pocahontas held one of her cousin's babies. Chubby and content to play with his gourd rattle, little Nantequas cooed in her arms as she tickled his belly and sang him a song. His toothless baby laugh was endearing and she wanted to keep entertaining him, and she surrendered him to her cousin Niime only reluctantly. She settled down in her own corner, pulling the bed covers only to her waist on this hot night and letting her feet stick out. She closed her eyes and tried to fall asleep, but soon sighed restlessly and rolled onto her back and stared at the smoke-hole in the top of the lodge. Her feet grew suddenly cold so she tucked herself in a little more firmly. The chatter of the others crowded the space, but her thoughts were competing for room.

She had spent much time with John Smith over the past few months—they were by no means strangers but were now friends. However today was the first time she realized she had different feelings about him. They were confusing and unsettling. She almost felt afraid, but it was unlike the first day they had encountered each other. The feelings of a pounding heart, a twist of anxiety, and general unsettledness were present, but instead of terror there the unfamiliar emotion was warm and comforting.

_It couldn't be . . . but could it? She couldn't possibly be attracted to the man. He was so unlike the men she knew. He was older than the boys who had unsuccessfully tried to court her, she thought. But he was tall and lean. His golden hair was beautiful, as were his light eyes. His skin was smooth and pale. His hands were not unused to work. Surely she was not falling in love with him!_ She stifled a laugh. The other girls and women had finally settled down, and there was a general hush as even the babies remained quiet and the small stone lamps filled with burning fat were extinguished.

The cover of darkness made it easier for Pocahontas to process her thoughts, but no further clarity came to her. She quietly inched her way out of her bedding and reached underneath a pile of her possessions and held in her hands the necklace that had been her mother's. Crawling back into bed with it, she needed no light to admire it. She had memorized its beauty long ago. Threaded onto tough fibers were blue and white small shells, hollowed white stones, a large white shell, and some grey beads acquired from some long-ago trading mission up through her father's confederacy of nations. Each strand held a row of decoration and the necklace clasped with a stone fitted through a loop. _Mother, I wish you were here_, she silently implored. _I know you have seen me with this man from the place where you watch over me. I am afraid of my own feelings. Were you afraid when you met Father?_

She placed the necklace back where she kept it carefully stored and then pulled the covers up tight. Her confused mind, even in the stages before sleep, ran pictures of babies, the man with the golden hair, the same man holding a baby (however inexplicable this was) and her own self. As dozing turned into dreaming, her mind swirled with imagery. The dream was random with no words. _She and John Smith were in the river together, wallowing in its coldness and squishing the sand between their toes. They were like children; it was harmless play. Then things began to change in the dream. Their hands touched. He placed a warm hand on her arm, around the red tattoo. He pulled her close and murmured something into her ear. She closed her eyes as he trailed his fingers across her neck. A baby cried _(was she dreaming, or was it Nantequas disturbing the night?) and the last dream image she saw before bolting awake again was_ herself under the same covers as John Smith, their legs loosely intertwined, sticking out of the covers on a hot summer night as they slept. _

The bizarre dream imagery sent her bolt upright, gasping. Her heart was in her throat, which was now very dry. She felt sick. She tried to calm herself down. _It was only a dream. It meant nothing. You are alone in your bed, safe with your half sisters and cousins. _She was so distressed that she began to cry as she burrowed under her bedding, creating a wall between her and everyone else, wiping her tears away. Her tears were unexpected; as unsettled as she was, she suddenly felt lonely. The room full of female friends and relations seemed worlds away, unfamiliar and unwelcome. She felt separated by a gulf that was in danger of becoming unbridgeable. The sound of his voice reverberating in her head was proving more of a comfort. Cold and alone, she suddenly did not want to be. _What would it be like to sleep nestled against his chest, with his arm draped across her?_

The next day poured rain, and held no promise of Pocahontas getting to see John Smith again. Fortunately, all of the village's corn harvest had been tucked away, and the rest of the foodstuffs were also in dry storage. One of her father's wives remarked that a sudden heavy rain at the end of summer signals an early fall, and Pocahontas could not disagree. Her spirits were sunken like falling leaves at the end of the season. She was sullen and kept to herself, doing chores without being asked and with a new single-minded intensity as she tried to process everything—real _and_ fantastic—that had occurred in such a short time.

_John Smith_. She suddenly wanted to be near him more than anyone else. She had so many more questions to ask him, and so many stories to tell him. She wanted to see him smile and she wanted to watch his cheeks color when she caught him looking at her for just a little too long. Then there were the unfamiliar stirrings of desire that her dream-self had yielded to. She was afraid she was now tightly wound like an animal about to spring on its prey: she was agitated and restless. She sighed heavily. She must focus on her work. As cold rain slithered like an icy finger down the back of her neck, she hurried to get back inside. All her confusion, though, she thought glumly as she watched rain puddle underneath the lodge's skin-and-pole doorway, would have to wait.

The rain provided an opportunity for the surgeons, the mapmakers, and almost everyone else in the colony to catch up on tasks only done well individually. It was very nice to have a respite from group labor, thought young Thomas, as he touched up old maps and drew new ones, carefully denoting newly explored areas and re-reading the hastily scrawled notes others had given him to help him complete the work.

The surgeon tore up strips of silk and cotton and wound them tightly in rolls. His cleaned instruments were laid out to air. Men taking care of the wash pushed linens, blankets, and clothes around in huge boiling vats with long poles, wiping the sweat that dripped from their faces as they stood over the vats, which sat on burning braziers. Occasionally rain would drip through the rough-hewn structure they were under, but a little clean rain didn't hurt the items being washed. Everything was laid to dry inside.

The few men with agricultural experience hovered over the storehouses, fretting if even a drop of rain leaked in. Others chased the pigs back into their pen, which they had escaped from. The undernourished beasts were angry at being soaked and they slid around in the mud squealing their displeasure.

Lon Davies and Ben Thompson were among those that could not be bothered to do anything constructive. They sat around playing knucklebones at a small table, their expressions cast into light and shadow by the glowing embers from their pipes.

From his cabin, John alternately fretted over the garden (he hoped the work they had just put in would be nourished, not destroyed, by the rain) and finished writing part of his report on what they had encountered thus far in Virginia and how they were progressing. The report would be read by the colony's governor as well as officials back home in England. As he sprinkled a little powder over the ink drying on the last page, he thought about the concept of "home". The word was supposed to conjure up images of familiarity, happiness, comfort, a sense of belonging, and maybe family. But for him, "home" did not have those connotations. He suddenly became aware of a dull ache in his head as he put the pages of his report in a neat stack. He attributed it to too much close work in a dimly lit room.

The governor and the Virginia Company backers would doubtless be dismayed by the report. So far, they had buried twelve men (they lost one on the voyage over and his grave was the briny deep) they had managed to keep a fragile peace with their savage neighbors after initial hostilities, they were getting pretty lean, and there was _no_ gold to speak of. John had been amazed when Pocahontas insisted that there was none, but was secretly gladdened because that meant the men could actually focus on important tasks like shelter and food. He himself had never been one for too many material possessions, and he found it repulsive that so many of the men who signed on to the voyage were only doing so in pursuit of wealth. He had chosen it for adventure (although he had to admit that the sum he had been paid to head up the crew had not hurt).

Adventure had always beckoned and challenges had always appeared, but Pocahontas was proving to be the most unexpected element he had ever encountered. She was certainly the most unique person he had ever had the pleasure of meeting. It certainly didn't hurt that she was beautiful. He smiled just to think of her, but then his thoughts quickly became clouded as he became less sure of his own reasoning. _Why_ thinking of her made him instantly less tense, less worried about his duties as captain, and less interested in his own way of life troubled him, and it also troubled him to think that he might already know the answer: _he was falling in love with her. _It was not something that was supposedly impossible or even improbable. He was a man, and she was a woman. _But wait_, he thought to himself. _Was she a woman, or just a girl_?

Perhaps his (albeit confused) feelings for her had been inevitable—all the time they spent together, talking, learning from one another about the world around them, the time he and his men had spent in her people's strange, alien village watching them go about their strange, alien ways. He had spoken to her father. On their first visit there, children, curious about everything, had boldly walked up to him and the others, grasping the shiny beads the men held out as a kind of bribe or bait. Pocahontas herself had been fascinated by the compass he carried.

Now, looking back on that memory—seeing the expression on her face change from puzzled curiosity to delight, then to confusion as she couldn't get the needle to move anywhere else but north—he did not see a woman, but merely a girl. A girl fascinated by a shiny toy, still unaware that the provider of the amusement was not a mere boy, not her playmate. John tapped his pencil against the edge of the table, nearly frowning due to the intense debate inside his mind. _This was good logic_, he thought, _but not entirely free of flaws_._ This logic was designed to keep him from the root of the real problem._

She was _not_ merely a girl in her deportment and behavior. She did women's work around the village, and it was taxing and time consuming and seemed never ending. According to Ben Thompson, these were the most dour and glee-hating people he had ever met (worse than the Scots), but then again, Ben was always drunk and hated work. Pocahontas evidently, according to an explanation rendered mostly in sign-talk by an old, impossibly wrinkled healer named Kekata, was a bit of a healer herself and was highly regarded among the people, not just for this but also because her father was the chief. Young girls did not command this type of respect.

Then there was the seriousness with which she regarded him in conversation and her obvious curiosity about things she had never seen or heard of. She was, he had written in his own journal, unmatched. Lastly, there was her appearance. She _was_ beautiful. Every other female face and form had faded from his mind when they met. He had been entranced. Lush lips and eyes like deep dark pools he could get lost gazing into. The way her long dark eyelashes met her high cheekbones when she looked down and away from him, suddenly shy. Indeed, the very perfection that was her face. Her long dark hair was the same color as women's hair in the far eastern deserts he had traversed, but unlike theirs it was never hidden. It was sometimes braided, and often tangled after a day of hard work. Once, she had stolen away from the village to see him for a few hours after finishing a day of fishing and gardening. That time, a few leaves had been tangled in her hair. He had gently pulled them out, and his fingers had the pleasure of being buried for a few seconds in the glossy blackness, coarser than he had expected and smelling of some kind of flower or herb. And then, there was her body.

He felt ashamed of himself, but also was aware of acute desire, as he thought back to the morning before when she had realized he had been staring at her. Her smooth skin, wiry but elegant frame, the strength and the fragility she embodied. Everything flowed together so beautifully that it would be well nigh impossible for any man not to find her attractive. And she was . . . he let his thoughts drift as the rain, still coming down in torrents, lulled him into a half awake state.


End file.
